California Voters to Decide on Sending Fewer Criminals to Prison
"Twenty years ago, amid a national panic over crime, California voters adopted the country’s most stringent three-strikes law, sentencing repeat felons to 25 years to life, even if the third offense was a minor theft.

The law epitomized the tough-on-crime policies that produced overflowing prisons and soaring costs.

Now California voters appear poised to scale back the heavy reliance on incarceration they once embraced, with a measure that would transform several lower-level, nonviolent felonies into misdemeanors punishable by brief jail stays, if that, rather than time in a state penitentiary. The referendum on Nov. 4 is part of a national reappraisal of mass incarceration."

Eugenics Behind Bars

I was sterilized in 1976 when I was 23 years old. My paternalistic doctor visited me the day after la operación and assumed I would be relieved to not have the “burden” of using birth control or worrying about periods.
He was so wrong. I sued him, and the manufacturers of the Dalkon Shield that caused my sterilization. After winning a settlement that opened the door for thousands of women to initiate malpractice lawsuits against this defective intrauterine device (IUD), I naively thought we had seen the end of sterilization atrocities. After all, the first federal guidelines prohibiting sterilization abuse were also implemented in 1976. Not only should these guidelines have ended sterilization abuses, they should have ended the racist, sexist, and classist eugenical thinking my doctor shared that underlay such policies.
Unfortunately, that is not so, at least in California.

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Yes, California, Your Prison Conditions Are Still Unconstitutional

In 1994, a federal court found that California inmates with serious mental illness do not receive minimal, adequate care. In 2005, a federal court in a different case found that the state had failed to provide adequate basic mental care in its prisons. And in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the state’s prison health care was so deficient that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

But California still hasn’t gotten the message. With this litigation still ongoing, a federal judge held Thursday that pepper spraying of mentally ill inmates is “horrific” and that solitary confinement of these inmates has got to stop without approval by a mental health clinician.

“[F]ailure to properly consider the mental state of class members requires the court to act,” wrote Judge Lawrence Karlton. “If defendants fail to meet their Eighth Amendment obligations, this court must enforce compliance.”

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Brown promises, again, to fix the prisons. Will he?

There's always one kid in class who gets away with it. You know the one. The teacher says the homework is due Friday and if you don't turn it in, you flunk. But this kid pleads for more time. Just give him the weekend and he promises to get it done. The teacher says OK, then Monday comes and he asks to be given until the end of the week. And then he promises to turn it in at the end of the year. Then he says he can get it done by next April. Promise.

Now, how about two years from now?

Gov. Jerry Brown is the kid who got away with it, persuading a three-judge federal court panel to give him until February 2016 — long after this year's elections — to reduce the state's prison population by 5,500 inmates and to put in place anti-recidivism programs to keep the numbers down permanently. Even the judges expressed surprise at their own leniency, acknowledging that they've heard similar promises from California governors many times since 2009, when they ordered the state to shrink the inmate population to comply with constitutional strictures against cruel and unusual punishment. The judges noted that in the intervening years, prisoners have continued to be mistreated, that Californians have paid a financial price for the state's delay, and that "this court must also accept part of the blame for not acting more forcefully with regard to defendants' obduracy in the face of its continuing constitutional violations."

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Californians Rally Today to Denounce Plan to Spend a Half a Billion Dollars to Build and Maintain More Prisons

 

On Friday, Californians across the state will gather in key regions to rally and condemn California Governor Jerry Brown’s newly released 2014-15 budget proposal, which will increase the amount the state spends on prisons. Brown’s proposal would raise the Corrections Department budget from $9.2 billion to $9.8 billion, nearly 10 percent of the entire state budget, and allocate $500 million to building more county jails.

Part of Brown’s motivation to expand prisons throughout the state is to meet a 2009 order to lower the inmate population to 137.5 percent of the prisons’ designed capacities to reduce overcrowding. Brown has failed to meet the 2013 deadline for this prisoner reduction and has asked the court for a two-year extension. But instead of focusing on reducing the state’s number of prisoners, Brown has plans to build nearly 6,000 new prison beds. Diana Zuñiga, statewide field organizer of Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), said that there are also talks of building three new prison facilities that would cost $810 million to construct, which would then be double due to interest payments as well as cost $100,000 each year to upkeep.

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Can Theater Help Solve California's Prison Overcrowding Crisis?

Can theater help solve California's prison overcrowding crisis? The answer is yes.
The recent prison compromise between Gov. Jerry Brown and the state Senate presents California with a unique opportunity to provide a durable, transformative solution to its prison overcrowding problem by focusing on rehabilitation. One reason for the crowding crisis is California's highest-in-the-nation 63.7 percent recidivism rate. That means for every 1000 inmates that leave prison, 637 commit new crimes and land back in prison.

There is a better way -- and it saves taxpayer dollars.

Multiple studies show in-prison rehabilitation programs can significantly reduce the percentage of prisoners who re-offend. If California could reduce its recidivism rate by just 10 percent, that alone would solve the crowding problem. Any successful system of rehabilitation requires multiple components, ranging from mental health and drug treatment to education and skills training. One aspect that may not be initially obvious, however, is the power of art and theater.

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For-Profit Prisons Are Big Winners Of California's Overcrowding Crisis

When America's largest private prison company opened a 2,000-bed facility in a barren stretch of the Mojave Desert in southeastern California in 1997, there was no guarantee that any inmates would ever reside there.

California's exceptionally powerful prison guard union was waging a fierce campaign against private prison companies, telling voters that the facilities were poorly run and that the industry would take away union jobs. "Public safety should not be for profit," Don Novey, president of the prison guard union, told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time.

Still, David Myers, the president of Corrections Corporation of America, a Nashville-based giant of the for-profit prison industry, believed his company's decision to build a prison in that remote corner of the state would eventually pay off.

"If we build it, they will come," he predicted.

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California's prison break

The three federal judges who have ordered California to dramatically reduce its prison population have now pushed back their deadline by 30 days. The delay is both less and more than it seems.

It's less, because it's nothing close to the three extra years that Gov. Jerry Brown said he would need to reduce overcrowding and to keep the number of inmates capped. Instead of facing a Dec. 31 compliance date, the governor and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation now have until late January. That's not enough time to reduce crowding by attrition, or even by assigning newly convicted felons to leased cells in and outside of California.

But it's also more, or at least it could be. It's a signal from the judges that they believe, perhaps for the first time since the reduction order was handed down four years ago, that California may be ready to devote considerable thought and resources to reducing the flow of felons into the system.

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Sacramento's prison deal

Before the courts lift a deadline on overcrowding, California must show it's serious about reform.

At the heart of the state's latest proposal to comply with a federal court order to reduce the prison population is a plea, yet again, for more time. If the judges say no and stick with their Dec. 31 deadline by which the state must release or find alternative housing for about 9,600 inmates, the deal brokered Monday by Gov. Jerry Brown and Assembly leaders on the one side and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg on the other will revert to the foolish plan that Brown proposed last month: Spend down the state's hard-won reserve fund by $715 million over the next two years and throw it down what the governor himself has called "the rathole of incarceration" by expanding the prison system with leased public and private cells for excess prisoners.

The end-of-year compliance date already represents a six-month reprieve from the original June deadline. The three-judge panel with jurisdiction over the case has rejected pleas for additional stays and has expressed, in barely disguised anger, its impatience with the state's resistance.

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California Prisoners End Hunger Strike Against 'Systemic State Sanctioned Torture'

'Peaceful Protest of Resistance' against solitary confinement to continue, they vow

 California inmates ended on Thursday their over two-month hunger strike in "nonviolent peaceful protest of . . . decades of indefinite state-sanctioned torture, via long term solitary confinement."

The historic strike began at the Security Housing Unit (SHU) in Pelican Bay State Prison but quickly spread to other prisons across the state, and included as many as 30,000 inmates at one point.

In a statement, representatives of the hunger strikers said that they "deemed it to be in the best interest of our cause to suspend our hunger strike action until further notice."

In addition to the human rights violations from long-term solitary confinement, California prison officials were slammed by human rights advocates for getting a green light to force-feed prisoners during the hunger strike, which stands in violation of international laws.

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The truth about 'early release'

Both Gov. Jerry Brown's ill-considered plan for complying with a court-ordered prison population cap by contracting out for inmate beds, and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg's much smarter plan to control the flow of new inmates into prison, are based on the desire to prevent, at almost all costs, the early release of inmates.

And that is understandable. California's 33 prisons are overpopulated by about 9,600 felons, according to courts that have ordered the number of inmates to be reduced to 137.5% of design capacity by Dec. 31. The prospect of that many convicted criminals being released onto the streets in a single wave is frightening.

But Californians should understand that their leaders' motivation for resisting early release is based at least as much on political as criminological facts. The prison doors will not swing open. There will be no new wave of released felons.

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California’s Continuing Prison Crisis

California has long been held up as the land of innovation and fresh starts, but on criminal justice and incarceration, the Golden State remains stubbornly behind the curve.

Over the past quarter-century, multiple lawsuits have challenged California’s state prisons as dangerously overcrowded. In 2011, the United States Supreme Court found that the overcrowding had gotten so bad — close to double the prisons’ designed capacity — that inmates’ health and safety were unconstitutionally compromised. The court ordered the state to reduce its prison population by tens of thousands of inmates, to 110,000, or to 137.5 percent of capacity. 

In January, the number of inmates was down to about 120,000, and Gov. Jerry Brown declared that “the prison emergency is over in California.” He implored the Supreme Court to delay a federal court order to release nearly 10,000 more inmates. On Aug. 2, the court said no. Over the furious dissent of Justice Antonin Scalia, who reiterated his warning two years ago of “the terrible things sure to happen as a consequence of this outrageous order,” six members of the court stood by its earlier ruling. California has to meet its goal by the end of 2013. 

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How California Prisons Got To Be So Insanely Overcrowded

California has been ordered to release nearly 10,000 inmates by the end of the year to resolve a notorious overcrowding problem that's been brewing for decades. The Golden State's prison crisis reached a fever pitch in 2011 after the Supreme Court said the overcrowding amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment." Now all eyes are on liberal Gov. Jerry Brown, who insists the public's safety will be jeopardized if he releases the inmates. The mass release would only bring prisons down to 137 percent of their capacity.

So how did California's prisons get to be so dreadfully overcrowded in the first place? The state actually had a reputation for an ultra-progressive penal system before 1980, according to the radio documentary "Prisons in Crisis: A State of Emergency In California." Then California began aggressively increasing sentencing in the late 1980s and 1990s in response to nationwide fear about high crime rates. Several high-profile crimes by parolees including the murder of 12-year-old Polly Klauss stoked fear in California, according to "Prisons in Crisis."

California enacted more than 1,000 laws that increased sentencing in a five-year span to settle these fears, law professor Jonathan Simon told "Prisons in Crisis" producer JoAnn Marr. "Legislators were competing with each other to see who could be tougher," Marr reported. "Any politician seen as being soft on crime ran the risk of losing his seat."

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California Prison's 'Pay-To-Stay' Option Offers 'Quieter' Rooms For $155 A Day

Some prisoners at one California jail will now have the option to pay their way into a more comfortable stay, community news source the Argus reports.

The Fremont Police Department is now offering its inmates a "pay to stay" option. For a one-time fee of $45 plus $155 a night, prisoners serving short sentences on lesser charges can stay in a smaller facility while avoiding county jails.

"It's still a jail; there's no special treatment," Lt. Mark Devine, a Fremont police official who oversees the program, told Chris De Benedetti of the Argus. "They get the same cot, blanket and food as anybody in the county jail, except that our jail is smaller, quieter and away from the county jail population."

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Solidarity From the Outside as Calif. Prisoners Face Retaliation On the Inside

As over 12,000 prisoners continue their hunger strike at prisons across California, supporters gear up for a state-wide rally at the 'maximum security' Corcoran State Prison Saturday to stand with those on the inside who are putting their bodies on the line.

Prisoners at two thirds of California's 33 prisons are going without food to demand an end to the 'state-sanctioned torture' that plagues the California prison system, including long-term solitary confinement spanning decades.

"This moment is historic in the ability of comunities inside prison to work with communities outside of prison towards common goals," Isaac Ontiveros of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition—which includes scores of prisoner advocacy and prison abolition groups, loved ones, and civil rights lawyers—told Common Dreams.

"[The mobilization] is really profound. It pushes forward the spirit of humanity prisons are meant to crush and opens a wide range of possibilities in which winning the demands of hunger strikers is something we can do together," he adds

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Still too many prisoners in California

Gov. Jerry Brown is fighting the courts, but he should be trying harder to curb inmate overcrowding.

Federal judges rejected Gov. Brown's request that they return control of California's still-overcrowded prison system to the state. Above: Inmates are seen at California State Prison-Lancaster in 2010. (Los Angeles Times / June 10, 20)

It may come as a disappointment to Gov. Jerry Brown — but it certainly should not come as a surprise — that a panel of federal judges rejected his request that they return control of California's still-overcrowded prison system to the state. The network of 33 state prisons continues to hold more than 9,000 inmates beyond the court's mandated cap, and Brown's administration has not presented a realistic plan to eliminate that excess, even though the court has extended the deadline for compliance from June 30 to the end of the year.

Brown is vowing to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and more power to him. He argues that medical and mental health care provided in California's prisons, recently so abysmal as to be deemed cruel and unusual punishment, is now the nation's best, and perhaps he is right. But even so, the courts can be expected to retain jurisdiction until the target inmate population is reached, and until the justices are assured that new standards of care in the prisons are a permanent part of the institutional
culture and not merely a short break after decades of unconscionable inmate treatment.

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This is from an LA Times editorial.  Tom

 

Gov. Jerry Brown calls on feds to give up oversight of prisons

A combative Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday declared that "the prison crisis is over in California" and demanded an end to years of intervention by federal judges and expensive edicts designed to reduce crowding and improve inmate healthcare.

"At some point, the job's done," Brown said at a Capitol news conference before catching a plane for Los Angeles, where he repeated the message. "We spent billions of dollars" complying with the court orders, the governor said. "It is now time to return control of our prison system to California."

Brown's push came as the state was faced with a deadline to produce a plan to further shrink the number of inmates in its 33 prisons. Late Monday night, the administration unveiled its proposal — "under protest" — but also filed motions calling for an end to caps on the inmate population and judicial oversight of mental health care.

The state also planned to seek to end federal control over all forms of inmate healthcare, the governor said.

"We can't pour more and more dollars down the rat hole of incarceration," Brown said Tuesday.

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